Special Features

Recent Articles

“If you have a story to tell the world, please consider improving your craft and seriously pursuing publication. Your voice matters; add it to the narrative.” A list of “bookish ways to fight the good fight” from BookRiot.

Disdain is empathy’s evil and more efficient twin, both born of close observation. Novels that consider individual reactions to events must be empathetic. But any novelist who wishes to depict society must harness disdain in order to make the depiction stick for the long term.

Out this week: Swing Time by Zadie Smith; Born a Crime by Trevor Noah; The China Sketchbook by I. Allen Sealy; Writing to Save a Life by John Edgar Wideman; The Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler; and Forever Words by the late Johnny Cash. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.

“So what now? Well, first and foremost, we need to feel.” The New Yorker has essays from sixteen writers including Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, Mary Karr, and Gary Shteyngart on the causes for and effects of Trump’s win.

“No matter who we’re horny to blame for our great national nightmare today, the Washington Post is offering a solution.” The Awl reports that The Washington Post is offering free digital subscriptions for students, the military, and government employers.

When I started this essay, my father was on his deathbed and now as I finish it, he is no longer alive. When I think of his past, I find myself asking: How much did his past shape him? How much of a choice did he have in becoming the man he became?

“The day after we elected Donald Trump, I told my daughter the truth: This was the wrong choice. I am devastated. I am furious. And I am sorry, because you deserve better.” Nicole Chung with some beautiful words over at Buzzfeed (q.v. also Mira Jacob (“Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America”) and Manuel Gonzalez (“I Will […]

“Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat – and won. I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and […]